2015-03-03T22:40:48ZHAYTON OF KORYKOS AND LA FLOR DES ESTOIRES: CILICIAN ARMENIAN MEDIATION IN CRUSADER-MONGOL POLITICS, C.1250-1350http://hdl.handle.net/1974/12731
Title: HAYTON OF KORYKOS AND LA FLOR DES ESTOIRES: CILICIAN ARMENIAN MEDIATION IN CRUSADER-MONGOL POLITICS, C.1250-1350
Authors: SHNORHOKIAN, ROUBINA
Abstract: Hayton’s La Flor des estoires de la terre d’Orient (1307) is typically viewed by scholars as a propagandistic piece of literature, which focuses on promoting the Ilkhanid Mongols as suitable allies for a western crusade. Written at the court of Pope Clement V in Poitiers in 1307, Hayton, a Cilician Armenian prince and diplomat, was well-versed in the diplomatic exchanges between the papacy and the Ilkhanate. This dissertation will explore his complex interests in Avignon, where he served as a political and cultural intermediary, using historical narrative, geography and military expertise to persuade and inform his Latin audience of the advantages of allying with the Mongols and sending aid to Cilician Armenia. This study will pay close attention to the ways in which his worldview as a Cilician Armenian informed his perceptions. By looking at a variety of sources from Armenian, Latin, Eastern Christian, and Arab traditions, this study will show that his knowledge was drawn extensively from his inter-cultural exchanges within the Mongol Empire and Cilician Armenia’s position as a medieval crossroads. The study of his career reflects the range of contacts of the Eurasian world.
Description: Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2015-02-04 17:45:16.622015-02-05T05:00:00ZIN SEARCH OF MINERVA’S OWL: Canada’s Army and Staff Education (1946-1995)http://hdl.handle.net/1974/12700
Title: IN SEARCH OF MINERVA’S OWL: Canada’s Army and Staff Education (1946-1995)
Authors: Coombs, HOWARD
Abstract: The intellectual history of the Canadian Army from 1946 to 1995 can be traced through the curriculum utilized by the Canadian Army Staff College and the Canadian Forces College to educate the Canadian Army staff officer in conducting warfare within theatres of war. This body of knowledge was analogous to what today comprises the operational level of war. It is a structured vision of conducting conflict that was reaffirmed and sustained by institutional memory created in the crucible of the Second World War and traces its antecedents to the military operations of the Napoleonic Age. These ideas were preserved almost unchanged throughout the Cold War until the introduction of operational art in the late 1980s, as a result of United States influence. The ability of the Canadian Army to maintain this professional knowledge, as a coherent, unchanging whole throughout a period buffeted by social and political change indicates the separateness of the military profession within Canada. This arose from the absence of consistent and durable political guidance during the immediate post war era. As a result the use of the Canadian military as an instrument of national power became disjointed. By default, the unifying factor in Canadian defence activities was maintaining relevance within alliances, particularly in supporting the Pax Americana. This influence can be discerned by applying theories of knowledge transmission and change to the Cold War curriculum used to educate Canadian Army staff officers.
Description: Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2010-01-18 08:27:04.9692015-01-19T05:00:00ZKnow Thyself: Marsilio Ficino on Revelation, Wisdom, and Reformhttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/12696
Title: Know Thyself: Marsilio Ficino on Revelation, Wisdom, and Reform
Authors: Sommerville, JAMES
Abstract: Marsilio Ficino’s Latin writings contain within them a program of clerical, social, and political reform. The agent of such reform was a disciplinary apparatus called know thyself. Through know thyself, an ideal philosopher would emerge. This philosopher had the potential to become, in time, a prophet. Ficino built his apparatus out of parts borrowed from the writings of the Platonists, early Christian monastics, and Ciceronians. It amounted to a process of daemonic combat, fasting and prayer. Citizens, under the Ficinian prophet, would be made to practice these arts in order to convert themselves to the truth contained in God’s light. The prophet would reform society and the church in order to eliminate heresy and ward off the influence of evil daemons. Ficino, looking at an Italian intellectual culture that denied the immortality of the soul and encouraged children to seek the praise of glory, wished to return society to its humble, devoted roots. There had once been a Golden Age of man, a reign of Saturn prior to the Flood. Know thyself would return man to that age and that kingdom.
Description: Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2015-01-14 13:11:29.5392015-01-15T05:00:00ZNATURALIZING CANADA AS A “MODERN” NATION: CONCEPTS OF POLITICAL ASSOCIATION IN LATE-NINETEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH CANADAhttp://hdl.handle.net/1974/12555
Title: NATURALIZING CANADA AS A “MODERN” NATION: CONCEPTS OF POLITICAL ASSOCIATION IN LATE-NINETEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH CANADA
Authors: Price, Peter
Abstract: The meaning and future of the new political jurisdiction created in 1867 called Canada were far from obvious or certain for those who witnessed Confederation and its first decades of development. This study looks at some of the ways in which the creation of a new Canadian state in 1867 influenced ways of thinking about the nature of political association and civic identity. Based on a thorough analysis of English-Canadian magazines published between 1867 and 1900, as well as major books and pamphlets written about the constitution in Canada, many by the same authors, it focuses on the English-Canadian intellectuals and public writers who tended to write most systemically about such issues. This study assesses changing ideas of political association in these sources through an analysis of the key political concepts of constitution, nationality, citizenship, and loyalty, each of which form the basis of separate chapters. It argues that ideas of “modern” political association developed by these concepts often led to concerted efforts to describe the Canadian state as a legitimate and natural container of civic affiliation. While many described these concepts as increasingly defined by the relationship between the individual and the territorial, constitutional state, they continued to be guided by assumptions about racial identity and lines of exclusion. This complexity is detailed in the final chapter, a case study of changes to naturalization law between 1867 and 1914 that saw many of the ideas examined in this dissertation take more concrete legal form.
Description: Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2014-10-02 14:22:45.1232014-10-02T04:00:00Z